Joe Walsh (Illinois)

Joe Walsh (27 December 1961-) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-IL 8) from 3 January 2011 to 3 January 2013, succeeding Melissa Bean and preceding Tammy Duckworth.

Biography
William Joseph Walsh was born in North Barrington, Illinois in 1961, and he worked for the Jobs for Youth program in Chicago before teaching American government and American history at Oakton Community College and the Hebrew Theological College. He was an unsuccessful "moderate Republican" candidate for the US House of Representatives in 1996 and for the State House in 1998, but he was elected in 2010 as a Tea Party conservative who opposed federal funding for abortion and Obamacare. He became a sharp critic of President Barack Obama, whom he accused of abandoning the US-Israel alliance and bankrupting the country, and he called on him to secure the border, even if it meant "moats and alligators". He staunchly opposed tax increases and opposed raising the federal debt ceiling, authoring a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution. Walsh lost re-election to Democratic candidate Tammy Duckworth in 2012, and he became a conservative political contributor to several television outlets. Walsh supported Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election and criticized the Black Lives Matter and "take a knee" movements, as well as criticizing Islam. However, he later came to oppose Trump due to his ties to Goldman Sachs elites, and he supported Robert Mueller and the Russia probe. In July 2019, he considered challenging Trump in the 2020 Republican presidential primary.